Realise the Truth
by Butterycrumpets
Summary: Post Reichenbach, Colonel Moran will do anything to draw Sherlock Holmes out of the shadows, even if it means going through John Watson first. Warning: graphic violence scenes, john/sherlock
1. Chapter 1

Realise the Truth: written by me, Buttery Crumpets

Credit for characters etc goes to: not me

Warning! torture/violence scenes follow. Not too bad this chapter though :3

For the most part, John Hamish Watson was utterly fine. It had been two years now, long enough for anyone to get over the death of a flatmate. Really, he was fine. For the most part.

Six months spent with his sister Harry and John almost believed that himself. That was until he returned to Baker Street, and smelt the dusty wood of the ancient flat and he could swear he saw the old chemistry sets and the framed periodic table for god's sake and he remembered how deep down, nothing was fine at all.

It had always been so simple with Sherlock, good or not good. He would shoot John a questioning eyebrow, by that time they no longer needed words to converse. John would reply with, usually, "not good." And Sherlock would give him a twitch of the corner of his mouth in acknowledgement.

These tiny things were what John missed the most. They were literally _missing _from his life. Sherlock was supposed to be there, yelling at the television or devising some disastrous experiment purely to annoy the hair off John. But he was gone, and John was fine with that.

"Fucking fuck!" Harry roared, flinging the sofa cushion to the ground in an explosion of such sudden fury, John leapt to his feet.

"Jesus, Harry, what is it?"

She turned on her little brother, her bottom lip nearly dragging on the floor.

"Sorry John-o, I forgot about that thing I got a few months ago."

"A job?"

"Yeah, I have to be at the job tonight. But hey, we can reschedule right?"

The doctor shrugged, settling back into his armchair.

"I don't mind, I guess. But we have already paid for the two tickets."

Harriet Watson's tongue shot out to moisten her lips.

"Go without me, seriously I don't mind if you do. Why don't you ring up that girlfriend of yours, old what's-her-name."

"We broke up." John reminded her gently. "Don't worry about it, Harry. I'll go by myself."

And so on the night of March 31st, Doctor John Watson could be found wandering the streets of London in search of the bloody jazz club Harry had insisted was so _hip_ months earlier.

The evening had been so quiet that a simple hand on his shoulder made Doctor Watson's heart leap into his mouth for just one moment.

"John?"

John had to blink a few times before he recognised the pointed chin, the flattened brow and the small frown slowly spreading across the thin mouth.

"Molly, how are you?"

"Fine thanks, I wasn't sure if it was you at first," She said with a small laugh,

John shook his head slowly, a faint smile spreading across his mouth. The second ticket felt as though it were made of lead in his pocket.

"What are you doing tonight?"

Molly gave him her most sympathetic smile.

"Erm, I've got plans actually." Her eyes darted about as though they were being watched. "Why don't you come with me?"

It barely took John a second to choose between alone at an underground, youth filled club or absolutely anywhere else.

"I thought your leg got better a while ago." Molly said as they walked, burying her hands into the pockets of her dull pink, woollen coat.

"Yeah, it got worse after..." John didn't need to finish his sentence. Molly Hooper nodded, swaying back and forth on the balls of her feet as they came to a wide, grey door.

"This is the place."

"Doesn't look like much."

A man who watched from across the street noticed that John's powers of deduction had clearly not been dulled from his time apart from the consulting detective.

"Take a look inside, it's really nice actually."

John pushed open the front door, all the while watched from the shadows.

In an instant something dull and heavy was thudding against the side of his head, he was clinging to consciousness but it quickly slipped away like sand through his fingers.

"Captain Watson? Are you with us?" a forefinger and thumb grasped John's face in a vice to shake him from his dream.

The burn of thick ropes around his wrists, neck and ankles was the first thing John was aware of. Next was the dry ache in his throat, a thirst he had not known since Afghanistan.

And third was the presence of someone he immediately recognised as his senior officer.

"Colonel?" John managed to slur through numb lips.

"Quite right, Captain. I'm surprised you remember me after all this time, even with this." The colonel gestured to a deep, jagged scar running from just beneath his left ear, down and across to the centre of his collar bone.

"You were, how can you be-" But his host interrupted quickly,

"This is not about me, John. Nor is this about you." He paused, his eyes lingering on John's top button which had already been undone. "This is about something much bigger."

"Your ego?" John wheezed.

"_Rache!" _The colonel cried. He leant in over the chair, his gaze finally meeting John's the way a vulture peers at soon to be carion. "Revenge, Captain Watson, I trust you remember Professor James Moriarty."

The name sent fire pumping through every one of John's veins. His eyes and mind were alight as the colonel continued.

"I can only say I honestly wish it did not have to be you. But you see one does not rise to be the second most dangerous man in London by breaking the rules, no, you must make your own rules and _stick _to them." As John's captor spoke, he drew from his side what appeared to be an antique kris dagger. "And that is just what I am going to do. Sherlock Holmes took someone from me, and so I shall do the same to him."

"He's dead, there's no point!" John was surprised by how quickly his tone had turned to pleading.

"Ah but that is the problem, _the _problem, John, do you know what it is?"

The colonel's lips where millimetres from the army doctor's rapidly flickering eyelashes.

"The detective is not dead."


	2. Chapter 2

Realise the Truth: written by me, Buttery Crumpets

Credit for characters etc goes to: not me

Warning! torture/violence scenes follow.

Thanks to all the lovely people who favourite/followed :3

John shook his head, the pressure building up behind his eyes until he had to squeeze them shut.

"Please, just let me go. There's no point in… killing." John's immediate memories had come trickling back as he was speaking, he had met someone. Someone he hadn't seen in a very long time.

"There is a point. But I don't expect you'll live long enough to see it."

The pain wasn't sudden, but was a slow and steady crescendo. Reaching the triumphant climax just as John felt he might pass out.

The colonel was methodical, working his way over the shoulders, arms, chest, dragging the blade lazily below John's eyes with a grin which had only previously been seen on the face of Jim Moriarty.

At about the half way point, John broke his silence. It was when the jagged blade was thrust beneath a fingernail that his first cries of pain echoed throughout the basement.

It was ten minutes before Colonel Moran stepped back to admire his work.

The captain was still alive of course, there was no way Moran wouldn't save some for later. But he had done well. Most of the cuts were deep enough for the red to soak the man's plaid shirt and trousers. He had avoided the face altogether this time, _definitely saving that for later, _and had barely started on anything below the waist.

The army doctor himself lay slumped, crumpled like paper in his chair, the burning of his wounds surpassed only by the raw, dryness of his throat. Had he been able to croak a few syllables, he would have chosen the word 'water'.

"I will be back, John. You and I have plenty more to speak about."

As the last fading strips of grey light disappeared from the thin windows edging the ceiling, John felt his mind wander from the painful, ragged remains of his body. The detective was not dead, the colonel had told him that and yet why would they need to do this to him? If it was revenge he wanted, why not kill John straight away. The colonel wasn't insane, John had served under him in Afghanistan and knew him to be mathematical in his strategies, neat to the point of obsessive and more than anything; he would not break the rules.

In his dark, new world John started to piece together the fragments of his memories.

Molly Hooper had touched his arm, and led him to the door. Why would she do that… unless she too was being threatened?

His thoughts were interrupted by a wave of dizziness mixed with nausea.

_Blood loss _were the last two words John thought before the darkness claimed his mind.

John Watson was awoken by the hilt of a dagger being rammed into his forehead. It was more painful than any of the previous injuries he had sustained at the hands of the mad colonel.

Fuzziness infected his vision in every direction and hung over his memories like a plague. The inside of his throat felt like sandpaper, and John decided he finally knew what it felt like to be as dry as the dusty, cracked riverbeds in the heat of the African Summer.

"Good morning. I have brought you this before we continue."

John reached out to grab the bottle, and found that the ropes had moved from his wrist to between his elbow and shoulder.

Following the first gulp, the doctor wouldn't have been able to stop even if he had known all the ingredients of the 'water' that the colonel had so kindly brought him. He drank until there was barely a drop left and his head was swimming.

"Better?" the colonel's ability to constantly smile even while he slowly tortured him made John's stomach turn. His mind felt keener, the fog having parted to make way for the long, narrow face of his senior officer.

"Why am I here, again?" John ventured, slowly testing his bonds once again.

"Revenge, my dear fellow! On Sherlock Holmes."

"And you say he isn't dead?"

"Of course not." The colonel snapped,

"Then why don't you just kill me? This whole, thing, it's all a bit theatrical don't you think?" John's heart rate picked up to somewhere between hummingbird and rabbit as he realised he was beginning to slur again.

Moran's sour grin returned once more,

"There is only one person I want more than you at the moment." The colonel's eyes glazed over for just a moment, "But I insist on keeping to my rules, and so I will not go after him. He will, however, come after you."

"He is dead." Watson insisted, resisting the throbbing in his head and the way his mouth had gone dry yet again.

"I should hope not, or else you really have no chance at all. Now I've had enough talking, where were we?"

John did his best to float away and leave his body behind. Pain was all in his mind, right? He just needed to realise the truth, there was no knife embedded into his leg. Except he opened his eyes and the pain escaped through his teeth in an audible growl because there was in fact a kris dagger wriggling around the nerves of his upper thigh.

After what might have been an hour, John was begging.

"What can I do, I'll do anything!" He pleaded as the remaining fabric of his shirt began to glue itself to the countless gashes and slices in his skin.

"You can keep still." Moran hissed, producing a thin, silver camera phone from within his sleek, black suit. John was unconscious before the first photo was taken.

Good dreams came infrequently to John Watson, even at the best of times. At first they were flashbacks to Afghanistan. His fellow soldiers would come crawling to him. He would be hacking off limbs until the wee hours of the morning until he awoke once more.

Then for the first year after it happened, he would see Sherlock falling over, and over. John would never be able to move in that dream.

And most recently, he would see Moriarty. The pointed teeth, the deep set, dark eyes and the professor's overall reptilian form haunted his nights.

But that night as he slipped into unconsciousness, he saw the endless blue oceans of Sherlock's eyes and felt a strange sense of peace wash over him. The waves crashed and broke all night in abstract blurs of blue and green until he was yanked back to reality.


	3. Chapter 3

Realise the Truth: written by me, Buttery Crumpets

Credit for characters etc goes to: not me

Warning! Violence follows

Reviews/faves/follows are greatly appreciated :3

He needed to go to the bathroom, badly. Afghanistan had trained him to go without real food for some time, but this was different. There was no distraction, except the pain.

Right hand, middle and ring finger nails felt as though they had been removed. Risk of infection: reasonably high. Multiple superficial skin wounds, already beginning to heal. Risk of infection: low. The dehydration should kill him in the next few days. That was something to hope for.

For what could have been days, or hours, John's head lolled back and forth as he slipped in and out of consciousness. The darkness was endless. And from that darkness, nightmares began to bleed into reality. Scrunching his weary eyes shut did nothing to keep the crazed grin of Jim Moriarty out of John's head. It was as though he dwelled behind his eyelids waiting for him to fully give in to the exhaustion.

The hunger, the burning thirst, the endless gloom was worse than anything Moran and his knife could have done.

It started with a whisper,

"Sherlock, if you're out there…" Anger filled every one of John Watson's cells, shaking him until he was hot and sweating with rage. He would have wept, but it seemed his tear ducts too had dried up.

"Sherlock! Where are you?" John screamed at the top of his lungs, "Sherlock!"

"John, are you there?"

The tiniest voice drifted up through the floorboards. At first the army doctor thought it was part of his dehydrated brain's hallucinations. "John it's me, Molly! Can you hear me?"

"I'm here!" It came out as a croak on the first try, but somehow Molly seemed to hear him eventually.

"Are you hurt?"

"I'll live, are you okay?"

"I don't know, I just woke up here. They've tied me up and I think they've drugged me as well." Her voice was getting stronger the more she spoke.

"Yeah, me too." John pulled his eyes open at the sound of shuffling from the other end of the darkness. "Molly, be quiet I heard something!"

The doctor's shallow breathing solely penetrated the silence before the door burst open. Light flooded into the room and projected the shadow of a tall man in a long coat for just a moment.

"Sherlock?" John wheezed.

His last specks of hope were snuffed out as the eyes of the colonel shimmered in the darkness.

"Sorry, John. Not yet."

Moran had been saving the face for today, the poor sad face with frown lines like scars. The eyes he had been particularly looking forward to. They were deep and sapphire blue like staring down into a well.

"Molly."

"Yes, the lovely girl. She agreed to help us in exchange for not going through what I'm doing to you."

"Let, let her…"

"Go? My most sincere apologies, Captain Watson, but I am going to draw Sherlock Holmes out of the shadows if I have to kill her, you, his family, your family…" Moran paused to chuckle humourlessly, "I have nothing left to lose. I don't enjoy this, John, you're a good man, you were a good soldier and doctor, but if you were in my place. If Sherlock had died on that rooftop, wouldn't you do anything to get the man responsible?"

"Sherlock did die. And so did the man responsible. And if I were in your place," John cleared his throat as he choked out each word, "I would let me go."

Moran sighed, rubbing each temple with the index and middle finger of each hand.

"I am sorry it had to be you."

The knife was discarded that day, or night, John wasn't so sure of time any more. He could have been kept for three days, months or hours. When every minute was dark and giving into sleep could mean death, he didn't blame himself for losing track.

Moran instead vied for bruising. The purple blossomed from each blow like wisteria. It was beautiful, in its own way; pain taking a visual form. The colonel traced the outlines of the shadowy bruise with his fingertips,

"I'll make you a deal, John." He sighed, "If I don't hear from Sherlock Holmes in the next month, let's say, I promise I will kill you. It is not within my rules to keep you alive for longer than necessary."

Moran turned on his heel and strode out of the basement, flexing his own bruised knuckles as he went. Spiral staircase to the ground floor, corridor, elevator up, Sebastian Moran was growing accustomed to this route. As he stepped into his shimmering black Bentley, his phone vibrated in his pocket.

**I know where you are**

- **SH**

A smile spread across the colonel's face,

**You got the pictures then? I know a nice café on Baker st, Get there, QUICK.**

- **SM**

"Baker street, hurry." Sebastian told the driver.

The café was empty as Moran approached. There was no sign of the late Sherlock Holmes, which was not good news for John. How unfortunate.

Rain fell in a light mist, not enough to warrant an umbrella which was just as well seeing as Sebastian Moran had only his thin, black cane to shield him.

**Mr Holmes, you have disappointed me.**

- **SM**

**Come back with Doctor Watson and Molly Hooper, then we can talk**

- **SH**

**Why would I give up my hostages? I am awfully fond of them.**

- **SM**

**I'm the one you want. Bring them here, now. It's the only option I assure you.**

- **SH**

Moran frowned, there was little he could do but obey. He was more than aware of the detective's _superpower._

John was half conscious when the light flooded in once again and his bonds were cut.

"It's your lucky day, John." Someone was telling him as he was pulled out of the basement. He vaguely remembered a car ride, but the days where his eyes could open of their own accord were over and he just lay on the brink of unconsciousness until they pulled up outside a familiar sounding part of London.

There was a voice from outside the car; an impossible, deep voice which John clung to as he felt himself falling deeper than ever.

The door opened and shut twice before someone came for John. Try as he might, his eyes refused to open long enough to take in any useful amount of information.

It was light, then dark as something was pulled over his head, the jingling of metal on metal the smell of the alleyway, departing footsteps.

Then a crash, grunts and thuds followed by a low hiss John recognised as a rifle shot.

"John, John are you alright?" the voice was pleading. The darkness was pulled away from his eyes and Sherlock Holmes knelt before him.

"Sherlock bloody Holmes." John whispered, "You're alive." His eyes shut once again.

Even the world's only consulting detective had struggled to recognise his old friend through all that blood. Every inch of him had been bruised, abused and broken and there was no one to blame but himself. Sherlock felt… bad.

The bruises on his face were fresh, earlier today or last night perhaps. The majority of the knife wounds were jagged, indicating a foreign knife like the Malaysian kris owned by the late Colonel Sebastian Moran. They looked about four days old judging by the crusty brown sores bonding them with his shirt. But the only thing Sherlock cared about were the shallow breaths drawn through John's cracked lips.

The former army doctor was lighter than Sherlock remembered; his bones were palpable through the flimsy fabric. It was twenty minutes to the hospital, taking traffic into consideration, and none of John's wounds appeared to be life threatening. Sherlock stumbled up the stairs with John in his arms, the floorboards creaking under their combined weight.

Sherlock draped John over the sofa in the living room, locking the door behind them for good measure.

Behind John's eyelids, the dreams were pleasant and bright. Tastes and sounds swirled like ink in water, mixing together to form new dimensions. He could feel the Afghanistan sun on his shoulders, the sky was the colour of Sherlock's eyes and the taste of Mrs Hudson's tea was fresh on his tongue. He could feel it trickling down his throat

Sherlock did his best to pour the water between John's lips, but some droplets rolled down the side of his mouth and into the fresher wounds on his neck.

John was floating in the swimming pool, the water shimmering in the gloom like an ethereal lake. It was cold and soothing, and upon checking, he found his skin had no trace of the wounds he knew were there.

It was lucky, Sherlock thought, that John was unconscious and therefore could not feel the sting of the antiseptic. John's shirt and trousers lay, discarded on the floor having been neatly snipped off his body by Sherlock's expert hand.

Next was the situation of his fingernails, or rather, lack of them. The consulting detective, who had been around enough dead bodies for a lifetime felt ill as he applied cream to the tender, raw skin and bandaged them tightly.

Two textbooks had John's fingers crushed between them. The pressure felt too real for what he knew to be a dream, but it was a dull ache and nothing he couldn't handle. The flurry of images concluded like the final movement of a concerto, and John fell into the deepest sleep in two years.


	4. Chapter 4

"If you refuse to take John to the hospital, at least let me take a look at him."

"I am perfectly capable of taking care of him." Sherlock spat,

"Yes, it certainly seems that way. Now, can you show me proof that Sebastian Moran is dead?"

A rustle of papers, a tut from their visitor and a satisfied scoff from Sherlock himself. At some point John had regained consciousness. He wasn't sure when, but he felt stiff and oddly clean.

"Is there any proof this is him?"

"The scar, Mycroft." John could almost hear the dismissive wave of Sherlock's hand. Soft footsteps resounded around him as the pair moved towards the kitchen, perhaps for fear of waking him.

John took in a deep breath, letting the clean air fill his lungs like one would run a dirtied sponge under clear water. The lingering scent of dust and book pages was a welcome change to the damp, dried blood of wherever he had spent the past… god knows how many days, or weeks he had been trapped in that dark place. But he was out, and better than that, the world's only consulting detective was in his kitchen.

The floorboards creaked as Mycroft left, leaving John and Sherlock quite alone.

Sherlock chanced a glance over to where John lay, too still and stiff to be asleep.

'John, I know you're awake.'

He remained completely still.

'John, I'm sure you're, erm, upset. And that is perfectly rational, so…' Sherlock paused to release his hair from his own iron grip before it came out between his fingers. 'Whenever you feel like talking to me, just… do.'

The last time John had heard Sherlock so tongue tied was when he was in the presence of the woman herself. He would have felt awfully smug if he wasn't actively supressing the urge to leap across the room and strangle his roommate while cursing his mother, brother and bloody _pet skull _to hell and back for what he had been through. Instead John H Watson remained perfectly still, if he didn't move he couldn't speak, and if he couldn't speak he couldn't say anything he might regret.

John would be damned if he was going to let their first conversation in three years start with anything except an apology on Sherlock's behalf. Then they would talk like adults, Sherlock would do most of the explaining of course, and once John had a rational explanation for the hell he had been put through, not just at the hands of Sebastian Moran, then they might be able to coexist.

A few minutes later John stirred again and slowly sat up. His eyes never left the impossible shape of Sherlock Holmes across the room. The silence quickly became too much to bear.

'You look well.' John ventured. 'For someone who fell off a roof, I mean.'

There was a pull at the corners of Sherlock's mouth, it could have been a smile or just a nervous twitch, John wasn't certain.

'I'm sorry, John.'

'Mm.' John prompted.

'About Colonel Moran, I never thought he would be so affected by Moriarty's death, I suppose there are some aspects of their relationship I was not aware of at the time, and if I had known, I never would have put you in such danger.'

'You idiot.' John muttered. Sherlock looked distinctly hurt,

'I thought it was a fine apology.'

'I don't care about Moran! I don't care about what he did to me over the past… however long I spent in that bloody place.'

'Three days.' Sherlock mumbled softly.

'Look those were three days, out of three _years_ and let me tell you something, they weren't even the worst three days! So when I say I don't care about them, I mean it. What hurt me was that you thought you couldn't trust me.' John's voice betrayed him with a small crack, but he was determined to keep a straight face.

Sherlock's mouth formed a thin line, but his eyes still cleverly avoided looking anywhere near his former flatmate.

'I do trust you, John. But in the event that something like this happened, I needed to be sure-'

'I never would have told him, Sherlock. You should have…' but nausea had hit John with the force and suddenness of a tsunami and the next moment he had collapsed back into the mess of blankets on his makeshift bed.

'Go away.' John muttered, dragging his forearm over his weary eyes. 'I'm too tired to be angry.'

'If you were tired, why were you just pretending to be asleep earlier?'

'How did you know I was pretending to sleep?' John hissed, his tone as bitter as he could make it. 'What if I just let you think I was asleep for a couple of years, and never told you in case-'

'Oh, just punch me already. I know you've been thinking about it.' Sherlock threw his hands up in exasperation.

'Is there anything you need? Anything I can get for you?' It had been another hour of silence and Sherlock was pleading now. John had to suppress the urge to grin.

'Well, milk for starters. And I don't take sugar in my tea, as you might remember.'

'I do.' Sherlock's eyes softened. 'Anything else?'

'Is Molly alright?'

'Yes, she's fine. She wanted to apologise.'

John waved a flipper and the matter was dismissed.

Sherlock disappeared with a flap of his coat.


End file.
